The Travelling Hordes

Bryn Jones is a Racecourse steward. He's based in and around the Eric Roberts Builders Stand, so he gets a fantastic insight into the psyche of visiting fans...

No.32 DARLINGTON

Flynnie may not have taken us to great heights ('Flynnie', 'height' - got to be a cheap joke in there, somewhere). Anyway, Flynnie may not have taken us to great heights in the league but, hey, the FA Cup, now that was something else. And now, it is something else. History.
Still, the Darlo fans were happy, reminding us, ad nauseum, how much they hate 'Pooly'. It's amazing how so many teams celebrate a good night by having a go at their absent rivals. And, let's face it, we Welsh fans are among the worst. I remember how internationals at the Racecourse were so often marred by fighting between locals and Cardiff fans. It's no wonder the English beat us.

(Scene: A battlefield somewhere near Shrewsbury, early in the fifteenth century. Our great hero, Owain Glyndwr, is planning his next move. Guto, his little sidekick, comes skipping to his side).

Hey, Owain, I've got a bloody great idea for winning this one.

Go on then, Guto, tell me.

Well, it's like this, see. We give those bastards over there a f****n' good hiding, then we take on the English waiting on that ridge.

Duw, now there's brilliant, Guto. I can see just one small problem.

What's that?

Those 'b*****s over there' are on our side.

So?

So, Guto, my little axe-wielding friend. Being a military genius, I would prefer to tackle the English, aka the Enemy, and leave the other Welsh, aka, the Allies, completely alone. 

Oh yeah, I see what you mean. Only, one of them Allies is my brother an' I owe 'im one for marrying a Jack, see.

Well, never mind, Guto, another day, perhaps. Another day.

Anyway, back in the Marston's those Darlo fans who weren't slagging off their neighbours were OK. Their boys split into two groups of maybe a dozen each and got on with the singing. There was very little activity in the PG, presumably 'cos they've all been arrested, so the Darlo lads never even left their seats. We had been warned that 20 or so top whack hoolies were descending on us for the afternoon. Thirty bobbies had been drafted in to cope. In the event, no hoolies came and a good time was had by all. Except for the stewards, Wrexham fans to a man, or bint.

We have two bints (Andy Capp for female and derived from the Arabic term 'bint', feminine of 'bin' - more knowledge than you ever needed, eh, folks). One of our bints is pregnant (not me, guv), so we will be looking for more, preferably non-gravid, stewards if anybody is interested. Actually, never mind pregnant, one of our stewards is a Chester fan. No prizes for guessing why he is stuck on the away end, especially for Millwall games. And, no, it wasn't me who stuck the poster on his back saying 'kick me' last time Cardiff were here. I just happened to add 'Swansea fan' to the poster, that's all. Only joking. To be honest, we all get on well at the away end, regardless of sex or ethnic origin.

Back to the absence of hoolies at the Darlo game. One daft sod did manage to get himself arrested. It was for 'foul and abusive'. A bit of 'foul and abusive' is par for the course, I know. And it's fine if it's directed at the afternoon sky or even at the PG or the Kop. But it's never, ever fine if it's directed at the copper who has his hand on your shoulder. When will they ever learn? 

Near to me were a lovely bunch of folk. They just happened to be ex-Red Neil Wainwright's wife, kiddie and in-laws. Kiddie showed what she thought of proceedings by sleeping through the last half-hour. I only wish I could have joined her. Even better, I wish her dad had, given that he contributed to both their goals. Another guy who got chatty was from Shrewsbury. Did I speak to anybody from Darlington? I don't think I did, actually. But neither did I have to, which shows how peaceful the afternoon was.
There was a 'sight impaired gentleman' at the front who told me that the Swansea game had been postponed. OK, so I mean the guy was blind. Am I allowed to say that? I hate political correctness. I know, as a steward, or 'crowd dynamics facilitator' in New Labour Speak, that I should be ultra-politically correct. Throw in my left-wing tendencies and a job teaching delinquents, or 'behaviourally challenged, socially disadvantaged sub-adults', or whatever, and I must be something of a freak, or 'physically different socially alienated person' ie. a leftie who hates political correctness. Give me straight talking every time. Darlos singing 'We hate Pooly, we hate Pooly' may have got boring after a while, but at least there was no 'fuzziness' there. So, let's not be diplomatic, folks. We were s***e against Darlington, Chester are a load of w******, Tories are upper- class prats, and, erm, OK, I'm signing on after my bosses read this. 

Oh dear. Any jobs for a 'circumferencely challenged sheep relations operative' out there? I know how to facilitate if you want me to. Honest.

No.33 - Hull

Why do Hull carry such a large right-wing element? Last time out, one lot even had a Red Hand of Ulster banner among the St George's crosses. Outside of football I have two mates from Hull and they're the nicest guys you'll ever meet. Strange.

But at the Hull game, a good 50 or so hard blokes, and I'm talking blokes here, not kids, came in and went straight over to our Speakers Corner next to the PG. You know the sort I'm talking about - big, stubbly lads with no need of a neck. Luckily, our Front Line is now more of a Dotted Line after the bans so there is not much to go for at the moment. But, these guys were definitely 'up for it' and it could all have turned very nasty.

They went straight into the monkey chant, which is definitely making a sickening comeback. Talking to the bobbies on my step about the chanting, I was told that wading in to stop it would only have caused a riot. Proof of this came when the police tried to focus on a guy leaping about wearing a mask (sheep mask, natch!). On first sight, this seems like an innocent enough pursuit until one of the bobbies pointed out that the mask could have been hiding a convicted thug. The hand-held camera moved in and an attempt was made to unmask Mr Sheep. Immediately, the No-Necks rose up and started baying. I don't know the outcome but I gather he was not a Wolf in Sheep's Clothing (OK, so I do this for free, remember. What do you want, Paul bloody Merton?).

Still, for a long time, radios cackled, cameras whirred and soon coppers poured into the area like a giant Custard Attack. 'Man to man marking', as our boss put it. And it worked. Brilliantly. The No-Necks subsided under the combined weight of the Boys in Yellow and a lack of any real response from the Dotted Line in the PG. The two bobbies on my step were a trifle uncommunicative for a while and, being slow-witted, I did not realise until after the match why this was so. It was because they were actually part of the Travelling Yellow Horde. They were not 'Allo, Allo, what have we here then?'-type guys but 'by 'eck, what the hell's going on' merchants. Sons of Heartbeat, in fact.

It's all well sussed, isn't it? Somewhere nearby there would have been a sharp-eyed Yorkshire Lad (or Lass, of course, in these enlightened days) able to recognise any errant yobs that the camera may have closed in on. Not so much Big Brother as Big Extended Family, when you think about it. It was, in fact, a dead interesting afternoon both on and off the pitch. It's just a shame we could not have grabbed the win we deserved, especially if one or other of the Edwardses could have got the goal right in front of us and shut the racists up). 

No-Necks apart, the Hull fans around my step were all very pleasant and actually came from East Yorkshire, for a change. They seem to look across the Humber for their enemies - Yellowbacks from Lincoln or Scunthorpe. They agree with every Wrexham fan that Lincoln play a very boring game, by the way. As for us, the general opinion was that we were just about the better side on the day and will make the play-offs along with them.

The difference is that theirs is a huge city (in the 'Biggest Twenty in Britain' category) while we, in the geographical sense, really are 'a small town near Chester'. After their next home match they will be moving in to a smart new stadium with the biggest capacity in the division (25,000). Given their recent flirtation with insolvency, it's no wonder they are feeling pleased with life these days. Their eight or nine hundred travellin' fans boosted our funds quite nicely too. The trouble is, I just wonder how much profit we actually make on days like this. Do we really pay £300 an hour while the chopper is rattling away up there? And how much do the extra bobbies cost? A bloody sight more than my £11, that's for sure. Still, it was a superb operation, so maybe it's worth it, after all.

By the way, has anybody in Hull ever been asked to surrender to the IRA?